Monday 11 August 2014

Tasty Mince - Many Frugal Meals

As part of the ongoing challenge of 'How Little Can You Spend' in our house I decided that some tasty mince was in order.
I used a few basic vegetable that I had on hand as well as some items from the garden and stockpile to make some tasty mince that can be eaten on it's own or combined with pasta, rice or potatoes to make different meals.
There was 1 kg of mince, 2 carrots, 1 capsicum, 2 onions (one of the ones in the photo had gone bad) some silverbeet and garlic chives from the garden, and I used 2 jars of diced tomatoes from the panty.

There was also this strange looking ball of frozen mushrooms that I found lurking at the bottom of the freezer.  Sure they were not much to look at a past their best but in a dish like this they just added to the flavour.


I also added celery salt, pepper and garlic and some red lentil at the end to thicken the mix and soak up some of the juices.


I am sure everyone has a recipe for tasty mince so I won't write one out here but I will say that my tips for maximum flavour are as follows:
Cook the onions until soft and translucent over a medium heat without browning so that they become sweet then remove them from you pan
Brown the mince in batches so that it gets lots of colour on it
Once the mince is browned add you tomatoes or liquid so that you can lift all of the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan
Add the rest of the ingredients and cook till done.

I have frozen this in smaller amounts and we will use it over the month to make a variety of meals.  It is easy to turn it into something new by just adding additional spices.

Do you make tasty mince?
How do you keep it interesting?

2 comments:

  1. Great for using those left over veggies in the fridge....Regards Kathy A, Brisbane

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  2. I do a similar thing with a big slow cooker full of meat sauce. It can be used like a bolognaise or in lasagna or changed into a cottage pie by adding peas, corn, bean and cubes of carrot (the sauce already has crated carrot in it). Its so convenient to have it on standby and i usually buy mince in 2kg batches from a wholesaler for $8 making it cheap.

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